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What can I do to hold my adjustments longer?

“What can I do to hold my adjustments longer?”

One of my patients asked me this question just the other day.

As our basis, please note that a chiropractic adjustment is not a permanent fix to subluxations. We can get subluxated during our everyday life depending on the physical, mental, and emotional stresses we place on our bodies (for more information on what a subluxation is, check out the: What is Chiropractic? article in our health blog).

The length of time between the need to get adjusted should be determined by how long your body can stay in alignment. This could be anywhere from one week to three months depending on your lifestyle, the health of your spine and the soft tissues surrounding it.

So what can be done to increase your body’s ability to hold adjustments? Reduce stress, fix the soft tissue surrounding the subluxation, and practice good posture. Let’s delve a little deeper into each of these topics.

Reducing Stress:

When trying to get in shape there is an old gym saying, “you cannot out-workout a bad diet.”

When your life is full of stress, your body will begin to break itself down. The body cannot tell the difference between mental, physical, and emotional stress and the body processes all the stresses the same way.

Your muscles get tight, your blood pressure rises, your breathing gets more shallow, your thought patterns are altered, etc. If you’re looking to get the most out of your adjustment, then you need to find ways to cope with the stresses in your life or remove them entirely.

Here are some of the best stress management strategies:

  1. Exercise Regularly: Your body can fight stress much easier when it is strong and healthy!
  2. Practice Relaxation Techniques: This can include gardening, meditation, tai-chi, yoga, other stretching techniques, and more.
  3. Get Enough Sleep: Your ability to think and manage stress can be severely reduced when you don’t get at least seven hours of sleep a night.
  4. Socialize More: Humans are social creatures. So, join a sports team, a book club, or a cooking class or something you enjoy doing and meet people with similar interests to you!
  5. Eat Well-Balanced Meals: Your body can cope with stress when it is well nourished with healthy food.

Fixing the Soft Tissue:

When your body gets a subluxation, the soft tissues that surround the spine such as muscles, tendons, ligaments, and the intervertebral discs in between the vertebra grow around the subluxated joint to protect the spine.

So, when you get adjusted, the soft tissue that adapted to your subluxated spine, tries to pull your vertebra back into its old position. Chiropractors address this issue by using modalities such as neuro-muscular re-education (NMR) exercises, soft tissue remodeling, and stretching and strengthening exercises. Your chiropractor should assign you these different modalities based on your specific condition.

Good Posture:

Your parents probably told you to stand up straight as a child, right?

Posture is incredibly important to the health of your spine. A spine should have lordotic and kyphotic curves that allow the body to properly hold itself upright. When the body is subluxated we lose our spinal curves, which makes it easier to get subluxated in the first place. So, by doing postural re-training we can improve our spinal curvature and decrease how often we get subluxated in the first place.

In conclusion, we can hold our chiropractic adjustments longer by decreasing our stress levels in our life, fixing the soft tissue surrounding the subluxated joints, and performing postural exercises to improve our spinal curvature.

If you’d like to learn more, here are some other great posts you may enjoy:

5 Biggest Problems With Chiropractic and Their Solutions

What is Chiropractic? Why Does Chiropractic Care Require More Than One Visit? How Much Does a Chiropractic Visit Cost?

Or, click here to schedule your first visit with Reach Health & Wellness Chiropractic.

*This content is strictly the opinion of Dr. Ryan Lee and is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not intended to provide medical advice or to take the place of medical advice or treatment from a personal physician. All readers/viewers of this content are advised to consult their doctors or qualified health professionals regarding specific health questions. Dr. Lee does not take responsibility for possible health consequences of any person or persons reading or following the information in this educational content. All viewers of this content, especially those taking prescription or over-the-counter medications, should consult their physicians before beginning any nutrition, supplement or lifestyle program.

Reach Health and Wellness Chiropractic is located in the Chattanooga, Tennessee area specifically in Collegedale, TN, a short distance from Ooltewah, Cleveland, East Brainerd, East Ridge, Ringgold, Apison, and Harrison.

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